You Never Know: Approaching Iran

The Obama administration’s steps toward a nuclear accord with Iran are as controversial as they are potentially historic. Here, Middle East expert and Brookings Institution senior fellow Kenneth M. Pollack games out the knowable and the unknowable in any eventual deal, what those factors might mean for the U.S., for Israel, for the Saudis, and for geopolitics as a whole, and why policymakers may not be able to afford to wait any longer to make a decision on the issue.

Somewhere, Donald Rumsfeld must be smiling. In his now-infamous discourse on knowledge and decision-making, the former U.S. Secretary of Defense tried to define numerous categories of inadequate information and how they should affect the policy process. He confused more than he clarified, …